Namaste Direct- In Depth

What Does Namaste (na'-ma-stay) Mean-
Namaste is a traditional greeting in many parts of the world, especially the East. Derived from Sanskrit, an English translation is “I bow to the divine in you."

What Namaste Direct Does-
Namaste Direct is unique from other microloan programs in that they have a very specific target group. They aim to help women in rural areas of Central America. They say they are "committed to alleviating poverty in the Mayan communities in Guatemala and Mexico by providing microcredit loans, business education, and vocational training to women."

Namaste's History-
In 1973 Bob Graham, a businessman from California visited Guatemala, where he was awestruck by the extreme poverty that its inhabitants endure everyday. A decade later he created the Katalysis Partnership to launch his "50-50 at 50" plan. His plan was that when he turned 50 he would devote 50% of his time and 50% of his resources to helping others. Namaste Direct is the successor program to Katalysis. Katalysis Partnership has expanded into Katalysis Microfinance Network of Central America. This is a regional non-profit organization that involves 13 intermediary credit providers and helps over 180,000 borrowers, totalling over $60 million in loan capitol in four countries.

More Information-
For more information on the programs and services provided by Namaste Direct visit their website at; http://www.namaste-direct.org/

Micro-Insurance

In a previous post micro-insurance was mentioned. I'm going to take a post to discuss what micro-insurance is, and the importance of it.

Micro-insurance is a term coined to describe insurance available to an atypical risk-pool with low premium, caps, and coverage limits. It is designed to help low-income people as well as businesses that are unable to obtain traditional insurance schemes.

Micro-insurance is defined by C. Churchill in his book Protecting the Poor: A Microinsurance Compendium as; "a financial arrangement to protect low-income people against specific perils in exchange for regular premium payments proportionate to the likelihood and cost of the risk involved...micro-insurance does not refer to: (i) the size of the risk-carrier; (ii) the scope of the risk; (iii) the delivery channel: it can be delivered through a variety of different channels, including small community-based schemes, credit unions or other types of microfinance institutions, but also by enormous multinational insurance companies, etc."

What that means is that the size of the person or company obtaining the insurance is irrelevant, while some companies are small and potentially informal, others are larger companies. The size of personal risk is not relevant either. The risks of the investor are in no way small to the investor. To sum it up, Churchill is saying that the insurance provided is on a smaller scale than what large commercial insurance corporation offer.

Not Just Companies

It's not only companies that are getting involved with micro-finance programs, it's also big names. Here is a clip from The View with Natalie Portman. She's talking about FINCA and how it allows her to make a change, and not just be a talking head.



While it is great that companies and celebrities are taking initiative it's still important for everyone to take an interest in the welfare of the world's population.